More than a million Indians flee as cyclone approaches

Commuters holding umbrellas wait for transport during rainfall in Kolkata on May 27, 2024, following the landfall of Cyclone Remal in India’s West Bengal state. FILE PHOTO/Agence France-Presse

KOLKATA — At least 1.1 million people on India’s eastern coast are fleeing to storm shelters inland, hours before a powerful cyclone is expected to hammer the low-lying region, ministers said Thursday.

Cyclone Dana is likely to hit the coasts of West Bengal and Odisha states — home to around 150 million people — as a “severe cyclonic storm” late on Thursday, India’s weather bureau said, predicting winds gusting up to 120 kilometers an hour (74 mph).

Major airports will shut overnight, including the key travel hub Kolkata, where heavy rain was already lashing the sprawling megacity.

READ: Severe cyclone to hit India’s west coast, south Pakistan on Thursday

The eye of the storm is predicted to make landfall early Friday, near the coal-exporting port of Dhamara, about 230 kilometers (140 miles) southwest of the megacity Kolkata.

It is also expected to impact neighboring low-lying Bangladesh, where the leader of the interim government Muhammad Yunus said that “extensive preparations” are being made.

Crashing waves are expected inundate swaths of coastal areas, with water predicted to surge up to two meters (6.5 feet) above usual tide levels.

READ: Indian capital chokes as ‘hazardous’ air pollution returns

Odisha state health minister Mukesh Mahaling told AFP that said “nearly a million people from the coastal areas are being evacuated to cyclone centers”.

In neighboring West Bengal state, government minister Bankim Chandra Hazra said “more than 100,000 people have so far been shifted to safer places”.

Businesses in Puri, a popular beach resort, have been ordered to close, and tourists told to leave.

“All efforts are being made to face the cyclone and save lives,” said Puri district magistrate Siddharth Swain.

Kolkata airport director Pravat Ranjan Beuria said the airport will suspend flights overnight Thursday due to “predicted heavy winds and heavy to very heavy rainfall”.

The airport in the city of Bhubaneshwar will do the same, while scores of trains have been cancelled, and ferries from Kolkata ordered to stay in port.

Cyclones — the equivalent of hurricanes in the North Atlantic or typhoons in the northwestern Pacific — are a regular and deadly menace in the northern Indian Ocean.

In May, Cyclone Remal killed at least 48 people in India in May, and at least 17 people in neighbouring Bangladesh, according to government figures.

Scientists have warned that storms are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer with climate change.